Growing Raspberries

If the call of the soil is in your blood, if you have green fingers in the springtime and feeling to get out there and “dig” , then you must get yourself a garden or plot of some kind without delay and go grow some rasberries.

And it is not a difficult task. Fruits, in the main are not that particular about their soils. They grow in anything between a sandy soil to loose, as to be almost shifting, and heavy clay. Lets face it, your soil is what it is, you can change it a little with a bit of hard work, but in the main you are stuck with it.

To get a really heaver crop of raspberries you need to plant your canes on rich soil where the roots can run deep down for moister. Bear this in mind when selecting a site on which to plant your cains.

If you have such soil, the canes will do best in full sun, however if you have light soil they would do better in semi shade.

Raspberry canes should be planted in the autumn or winter months. If you are starting afresh then dig in plenty of manure, and add more every time after fruiting. Raspberries are a very hungry crop.

Allow six feet between the rows and about a four feet between each plant. The raspberry, is such a strong grower, that you will find that it needs this sort of space to produce a heavy yield.

Pruning:

During the first spring after raspberries have been planted, the whole of the cane should should be cut down to an inch or so off the ground. This means that the first years crop will be sacrificed, but believe me the subsequent seasons will be much heavier, because the necessary amount of root growth will have taken place.

Pruning in the following seasons is done directly after the season’s fruit has been harvested and consists of cutting out all the old fruiting canes. This is so that the plant can replace them. Leave three or four of the strongest young shoots on each root. Best to prune in late August or early September, because the young canes are then ripened by exposure to autumn sunshine, should there be any.

Autumn fruiting raspberries:

To mine mind , these are the best raspberries to grow, mainly because birds do not seem to go for them.

To get autumn raspberries make sure you buy the right varieties and to do this, ask at your local suppler. Like the ordinary summer fruiting raspberries, this crop likes rich soil and moisture for its roots.

Where so many people fail with the autumn fruiting is with the pruning. The way to do this is to cut down all the canes to within two or three inches of the ground in the month of April. The young growth that comes up from this drastic cutting will give you a great autumn crop in October or November is it is not too cold.

Loganberries:

I find this fruit fits in well with my fruit growing because it makes a very good boundary fence and gives you fruit at the same time. The plants growth is very quick and hardy. The crop does best on fair to good soil. When planting, allow about six feet from plant to plant in the row, and prune in exactly the same way as advised for summer fruiting raspberries.

RASPBERRY ENEMIES

There is one problem that you cannot over come and that is: orange rust, which also attacks the blackberry and loganberries. There is only one thing that you can do and that is pull up the cains and burn them. There is no treatment as yet. Just on the bright side, I have never seen it, so it is quite rare.

There are bugs, of course, the cut worm and rasberry-borer. I spray my crops with liquid soap once a week and that seems to keep most things at bay. However you must net for birds.